Julius Caesar

Performances
Plot Synopsis
Dates
Sources
“Immortal Caesar”

Performances

Friday, October 27, 7:30pm
Saturday, October 28, 1:30pm
Sunday, October 29, 1:30pm
Friday, November 3, 7:30pm
Saturday, November 4, 1:30pm
Thursday, November 9, 7:30pm
Saturday, November 11, 1:30pm

Performances will last approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission.

Power Center for the Performing Arts
121 Fletcher Street

Julius Caesar is sponsored by the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Plot Synopsis

Julius Caesar has returned to Rome triumphant from the war against Pompey. The Roman Republic is prepared to heap new honors upon him, causing concern and dismay among some senators who fear that too much power is held by one man.

Caius Cassius plots a conspiracy to murder Caesar, enlisting the support of the well-respected Marcus Brutus. Brutus has misgivings but is persuaded that Caesar’s death is necessary for the good of the Roman Republic. However, he rejects Cassius’ proposal that Mark Antony, close friend of Caesar, should also be killed.

Disregarding the prophetic dream of his wife, Calphurnia, Caesar goes to the Capitol on the Ides of March and is stabbed to death. At Caesar’s funeral, first Brutus and then Antony speak, presenting contrasting views of the conspirators’ motives. The people turn against the conspirators, who are forced to flee Rome.

Mark Antony and Caesar’s nephew, Octavius, take command of Rome and lead an army against the forces of Brutus and Cassius. The conspirators are defeated at Philippi. Cassius commits suicide. Brutus, sensing defeat and haunted by Caesar’s ghost, also takes his own life.

Dates

Julius Caesar was probably written in 1599, the same year Shakespeare wrote Henry V and As You Like It and drafted Hamlet. The first record of it being performed comes from the diary of Thomas Platter, who states that he saw the play on September 21, 1599, meaning that it may have been the play that opened the Globe Theatre.

Sources

As with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare drew heavily on Sir Thomas North’s 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes for the plot of Julius Caesar, and at times even follows North’s phrasing. There are, however, important differences between the source and the play. Shakespeare compresses time and telescopes events for dramatic purposes, and although he relied on Plutarch for descriptions of his characters, Shakespeare’s treatment of them is more subtle and human. The speeches of Brutus and Antony at Caesar’s funeral are entirely Shakespeare’s invention.

Immortal Caesar

Suzanne Cross examines the legendary life of Julius Caesar

Suzanne Cross is the author of Julius Caesar: The Last Dictator.

Julius Caesar achieved the goal of his life—a fame akin to immortality. Born in 100 BC to one of Rome’s most noble families, Caesar was well aware that his relations had lost their former political clout and determined to rebuild it. The Republic of Caesar’s youth was in decline: decades of increasing political stress between competing groups and classes led to civil wars, wars against the Italian allies, and recurring bloody coups d’etat. Underlying the turmoil was a struggle between the handful of noble families who had controlled the Republic for a century (the Optimates) and those wishing to extend power to other classes and allied states (the Populares). From the beginning, young Caesar firmly allied himself with the popular agenda. Then, in his teens, came the terror of the dictator Sulla, with proscription lists in the Forum detailing who would be killed and whose property would be confiscated. Rome appeared locked in a cycle of revolution and counter-revolution.

Caesar’s early life reads like an adventure thriller. During Sulla’s rule, the dictator demanded that Caesar divorce his teenage wife, the daughter of Sulla’s enemy. Caesar defied the dictator and was forced to flee Rome with a price on his head. While studying abroad, Caesar was captured by pirates and held to a gigantic ransom. He joked with the captain and crew that he would return and destroy them all. The pirates laughed, but Caesar did exactly as he promised, crucifying the lot. In battle, although just 20, he won the Corona Civica for valor, the Roman equivalent of the Medal of Honor. He fought as a young officer in Rome’s wars in Spain and Turkey, showing hints of the military genius he would fully develop in Gaul. He worked his way up the political ladder—the Cursus Honorum, or “honors race” — becoming in turn Quaestor, Aedile, Praetor, and finally (in 59 BC) Consul, the highest political honor in the state.

To force through his political agenda, Caesar was the moving force in an informal alliance with Pompey and Crassus, two of Rome’s greatest power-brokers, in the so-called “First Triumvirate.” It controlled Rome’s politics for a decade, and Cato later mourned that it was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic.

As a man, Caesar was remarkable. He was notorious for his sexual liaisons with women (and, rumor had it, with men). He was known for his great personal charm, wit, education, and extravagance. He was considered by Cicero to be the best lawyer, speaker, and writer in Rome besides Cicero himself. Cultured and intellectual, he avoided fine food and wine, preferring plain soldier’s fare. From the start, he was a gambler, whether in prosecuting a well-born senator for corruption or in running for the office of High Priest—Pontifex Maximus—when he was only 37, beating two famous elder statesmen. His financial extravagance was notorious, and several times he barely escaped his creditors. He had a long-term affair with Servilia, sister of his greatest enemy, Cato, and once gave her a perfect pearl worth more than a great estate. He was especially close to her son, Brutus, who would later lead his murderers.

After his Consulship, Caesar chose his foreign province in Gaul. He found a pretext to invade the unconquered lands in northern Gaul where, in a decade of bloody conquest, he himself estimated that he killed or enslaved millions of men, women and children. The booty made him immensely rich, while the legend of his military genius was established. It has never faded.

During Caesar’s long absence in Gaul, Rome was threatened by internal political violence on an increasing scale. Pompey Magnus (“The Great”), once allied to Caesar by marriage, now maneuvered to ally himself with Caesar’s enemies. As Caesar’s reputation rose, Pompey’s jealousy grew. Finally, in 49 BC, a small rump of die-hard senators managed to ram through legislation stripping Caesar of his provinces and powers. Under Roman law, Caesar could now be prosecuted by his enemies for his political actions: if convicted, he could hope for nothing more than exile and ruin. Instead, with the 13th Legion, Caesar invaded Italy, crossing the Rubicon in January of 49 BC. Pompey and the conservative senators fled Rome, vowing to destroy Caesar in battle in the East, where Pompey could access vast numbers of allied troops.

In the world war that followed, Caesar fought brilliant battles in quick succession in Greece (where Pompey’s army was destroyed at Pharsalus in 48 BC), Egypt (where he became Queen Cleopatra’s lover), Turkey, Africa, and Spain. He was victorious on all fronts. He returned to Rome with his enemies destroyed and power solely in his own hands. Now, he could legislate the political reforms he had long envisioned but which were impossible under the Republic. He found, though, that ultimate power meant anything but ultimate acceptance. Caesar made a policy of forgiving his enemies and welcoming them back into his administration. It rubbed the Optimates raw that Caesar now controlled the government, awarding prestige positions, bringing provincials and non-nobles into the hallowed senate, awarding the Roman citizenship as if he owned it. Even those men who had fought with Caesar, or gained benefits at his hands, came to hate accepting his favors. At most, Caesar could only wring from the former Optimates a sullen acquiescence, symbolized by Cicero, who praised the dictator to his face, while his letters seethed with hatred of his dictatorship.

Caesar’s successes seemed to be endless. In late February, 44 BC, he was made dictator for life by the senate. This mobilized Brutus, Cassius, and others to begin plotting his death. Having settled Italy, Caesar planned one last great campaign, against the eastern Parthians. His forces were ready: Caesar planned to leave Rome on March 18. His final senate meeting was scheduled for the Ides of March (March 15). Months before, Caesar had dismissed his bodyguard, saying, “It is more important for Rome than for myself that I should survive. I have long been sated with power and glory; but, should anything happen to me, Rome will enjoy no peace.” The evening of March 14, sharing dinner with several friends, he was casually asked what was the best kind of death to die. “A sudden one,” he replied.

The next day, dozens of senators confirmed their pact against tyranny by stabbing the dictator more than 20 times, slashing each other in their frenzy. But the Republic was not reborn with Caesar’s murder. Instead other, lesser warlords would fight for power until the remains of the Republic were won by Octavian, Caesar’s grand-nephew and adopted son. In the process, each and every assassin of Caesar would die violently throughout the Roman world.

In July, 44 BC, Octavian was giving Rome memorial games in Caesar’s honor. To the wonder of the grieving crowds, a comet rose in the sky and blazed across it daily until the games were over. To Romans everywhere, it pledged that Caesar, now divine, had joined the gods. Shakespeare’s play is only the greatest of the many works written on this extraordinary Roman, whose life and death came to symbolize an epoch in history. Gaius Julius Caesar found what he had always sought—a primacy of fame.